Just some context behind a few of the things mentioned i feel that are relevant. 

So I f20 have known my friend m21, since we were roughly 14, for the sake of this post we will call him R. In my opinion, we were friends but not SUPER close friends, not close friends to the point where i would tell him extremely personal stuff. 

He moved across the country when we were 15, after that, we’ve always had a very off and on texting pattern. We pop in, speak, then what i assumed was mutual, we both just get busy and don’t talk for awhile. This has been a consistent pattern for awhile now, that i didn’t think was a problem.

I currently have a ton of physical and mental health issues right now that i’m trying to work out, it leaves me burnt out a ton and often busy between hospital and doctor appointments. I did communicate to R about this awhile ago very briefly since he had no idea about any of this since it had been awhile since we talked. 

So to the context of what started this.

We were messaging briefly back and forth a fair amount in may i was staying with a friend across the country for a little so i didn’t have a ton of free time, there was a few hours or days in replies but i would always get back to him (I know i should get better with replying, i just struggle with small talk)

 He would always talk about himself, uni, his friend group, getting high or about his sex life, which i didn’t mind i tried to engage as much as possible with that. I personally never mentioned much about myself, maybe what i was watching/ what i was up to/ a little about my physical health and let him know that i had just recently lost a friend and was a bit hurt about it so my communication will be a bit more inconsistent (this friend i had lost confessed his feelings for me, then decided to get distant when i rejected him as nicely as i could). R left me on read twice, so i assumed he was quite busy with uni so i left it at that and was going to wait until he got back to me.

Regardless, I just settled back into home for a week and i received this message from him. It felt very abrupt and out of the blue, hence why i was so taken aback. 

I will admit, i got defensive and a little heated, i partially felt upset that instead of communicating to me about what he wanted, he just expected me to understand exactly what his idea of a friendship is. I have another friend i talk to very briefly, but she’s my closest friend, we only ever talk when we have stuff to talk about because we understand how busy it is for eachother. I was happy to change my texting pattern for R/ start texting him more often if that’s what he needed but my main point was, instead of talking about it - he decided “ghosting me first” was the better way to go about it? which really upset me - he also NEVER brought it up before! i fully understand if this was a frequent asked id fully be the asshole, but this is the first ever time he’s mentioned something like this. 

I was trying to explain to him that my lack of texting, does not show my level of care for him/ it wasn’t my love language. If he messaged me asking for a chat i 100% would, i love having a proper catch up over the phone or text messages with people, just not the aimless “wud” texts.

i know i could’ve just said i care about you, i realise that now after having a clear mind, i know that would’ve fixed all of this - but my mindset in that moment was to explain everything as transparent as possible so he wouldn’t need to feel like it was just him alone i ‘treat’ this way/ that it wasn’t him singled out and it was just how my communication patterns are in hopes he wouldn’t feel so ‘lack of cared for?’ 

AIO for not apologising and deciding to text more? Or was i valid for trying to talk through/ explain my side? - It’s been a bit now but i’m still pretty cut up about it. 

(for extra, extra context, when i was younger i was in an abusive relationship for awhile with someone in our shared school, i never wanted to include outside people but, R was my ex’s friend too so it was easy for him to see/hear everything that was going on and would ask me questions, this is why he mentioned about “everything he’s done for me” i never wanted him to be anywhere near it because i knew how draining and bad it was, but he always insisted i tell him otherwise he’d try get my ex to talk which would annoy my ex/ he’d project it onto me and put me into some tricky situations - i appreciate R and understand he was just worried about his friend/ i always thanked him for caring about me. 

(i’m SO sorry how many screenshots there are, i tried to get the brunt of it and make it as easy to understand as possible, thank you for taking the time to read!!)

AIO - in how i responded to my friends want for more texting it?